stiff, angular man. The yellow-wash on the wall seemed to have caught
its reflex from the faded face, and stared grimly at deep lines of
avarice ironed into it. Even the mud on the floor, the dust on the
table, and the cobwebs on the ceiling maliciously conspired against him,
and asserted themselves in every seam of his threadbare clothes. But the
face,--stern, stony, relentless, an uncertain compromise between the
ghastly severity of a German etching and the constipated austerity of
old pictures of the saints,--in that, one fixed idea had blotted out
every other vestige of humanity. Each starting vein, bone, and muscle
on the hungry visage had "stand and deliver" scarred all over it. The
eager metallic glitter of his eyes, the rigid harshness of his mouth,
and the nameless craving that seemed to speak from his lean, attenuated
cheeks, united to make the name of Hardy Gripstone and Beast synonymous.
He looked like a beast, he ate like a beast, he lived like a beast.

Beast started out of every bristle on his unkempt head; it shone in the
unhealthy gloss of his battered hat; it wallowed on the stock that clung
around his dirty neck; it glistened in the grease on his dingy clothes;
it starved on his thin, claw-like hands; it flourished in the grime
imbedded under his nails; it creaked in his worn-out, down-trodden
shoes. Men, as he shambled by on the streets, unconsciously muttered,
"Beast!" women, shrinking from him, whispered, "Beast!" between the
heart-throbs the terror of his presence created; children, hushing their
cries in silent horror at his grimace, stared "Beast!" out of their
wonder-stricken eyes. You might bray him in a mortar and boil the powder
in a caldron, yet amid all the envy, hatred, and malice that made up the
ingredients, Beast would have triumphantly floated on the top. Beast!
Beast! Beast! Beast! The universal verdict clutched him like the shirt
of Nessus. He actually grew proud of the title, and received the stigma
with a cluck of beastly joy, as though inspired with a certain beastly